Thanks to everybody for the many suggestions on this.
Basically I'm trying to establish a canonical order for a wedge product of
1-forms. The 1-forms may be expressed in several different manners. The
product may contain general symbolic indices and base indices. The base
indices might be {1,2,3) or {0,1,2,3} or {t,x,y,z}. I want the list of base
indices to specify their order. The ones listed are no problem because they
are in natural order. But a user might specify {x,y,z,t} or (in Greek
characters) {rho, theta, phi}, which are not in natural order.
But there are many problems. Using replacement rules can cause difficulties
because the same symbols or values might be in non-indexed positions and
they should not be replaced.
So I have to think about this and will probably have to retreat from trying
to implement such a general capability. Most likely I will have to limit or
specify the possible Mathematica forms of the 1-forms.
David Park
djmp at earthlink.net
http://home.earthlink.net/~djmp/
From: Paul Abbott [mailto:paul at physics.uwa.edu.au]
To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
In article <ccb5hr$ekg$1 at smc.vnet.net>,
"David Park" <djmp at earthlink.net> wrote:
> Is it possible to change the natural sort order of symbols that is used in
> Sort?
>
> I would like something like the following statement (that does not work).
>
> Assuming[d < b < c, Sort[{a, b, c, d, f}]]
>
> giving the desired output
>
> {a,d,b,c,f}
>
> I won't be sorting simple lists of symbols, but lists of similar, but
> unspecified, expressions that contain the symbols. For example...
>
> {h[x,g[a]], h[x,g[b]], h[x,g[c]], h[x,g[d]], h[x,g[f]]}
>
> which should give
>
> {h[x,g[a]], h[x,g[d]], h[x,g[b]], h[x,g[c]], h[x,g[f]]}
>
> Is there any way to do this?
I cannot see a simple way (via OrderedQ) to change the sort order of
symbols. However, here is one way to achieve what you want:
[1] Use Ordering to define a set of replacement rules for your symbols:
OrderRule[l_] := Thread[l[[Ordering[l]]] -> l]
For your example,
OrderRule[{d, b, c}]
{b -> d, c -> b, d -> c}
[2] If you would like to use ordering like d < b < c, you could overload
OrderRule as follows:
OrderRule[Unevaluated[Less[l__]]] := OrderRule[{l}]
OrderRule[Unevaluated[Greater[l__]]] := OrderRule[Reverse[{l}]]
[3] Then use Sort followed by OrderRule:
Sort[{a, b, c, d, f}] /. OrderRule[d < b < c]
{a, d, b, c, f}
Sort[{h[x,g[f]], h[x, g[d]], h[x, g[c]], h[x, g[b]], h[x, g[a]]}] /.
OrderRule[d < b < c]
{h[x, g[a]], h[x, g[d]], h[x, g[b]], h[x, g[c]], h[x, g[f]]}
Cheers,
Paul
--
Paul Abbott Phone: +61 8 9380 2734
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